In case you missed it last time

David Cheal reviews Moby at Wembley Arena

Moby: his stage show was dominated by songs from his ubiquitous and hugely successful Play album

by David Cheal

12:01AM GMT 04 Dec 2002

Two years have passed since Moby last toured Britain - long enough, you'd have thought, for him to come up with some new ideas for his stage show. Yet the penultimate date on the UK leg of his world tour was in most respects a repeat performance of his last visit; the set list, like last time, was dominated by songs from his ubiquitous and hugely successful Play album, the band cranked out the same awesome, bass-heavy techno-rock hybrid, and Moby even repeated some of the gags and stage patter from his 2000 tour. (The "masturbatory guitar solo" skit was even less funny this time round.) It was all dispiritingly familiar.

As well as revisiting well-trodden musical ground, the show gave the impression that it had been put together on a tight budget. The stage backdrop was so shoddy as to be not worth bothering with - a series of badly painted mountain peaks which were presumably meant to reinforce the brand image of the sleeve of his recent 18 album, but which actually looked like something from a primary school production of The Sound of Music. And the largely forward-facing sound system was ill-equipped to serve those who, like me, were sitting to the side of the stage; from my vantage point, the drum sound in particular was awful - like a man banging a series of wet cardboard boxes with baseball bats.

Which is not to say that this was a wholly bad show. Moby was a nerdy but affable host and an admirably quirky and energetic performer, skittering around between congas and keyboard or thrashing at his guitar and generally trying to whip the crowd into a frenzy with his cheerleader antics. (Their response was enthusiastic, but not overwhelmingly so.) As always, his penchant for idiosyncratic cover versions came up trumps with a brief and glorious rendition of the Stooges' I Wanna Be Your Dog. And singer Diane Charlemagne performed some impressive vocal pyrotechnics, notably on Why Does My Heart Feel So Bad? and the frenzied Feeling So Real.

But still: this was not the performance of a man at the peak of his powers. The release earlier this year of the disappointingly familiar-sounding 18 album suggested that he is currently treading water, and this show served only to reinforce the impression that, right now, Moby - once famous as a musical genre-bender - is not exactly buzzing with restless creative zeal.